1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to international roamers. More specifically, the invention relates to traffic control for the international roamers.
2. Background of the Technology
Common carrier Mobile communication systems are deployed by different companies and network operators within almost every country around the world. Many of those network operators offer international roaming to their subscribers traveling abroad, and to travelers visiting their territory and using their foreign mobile telephones. Over the last few years, revenues to the network operators from home subscribers have consistently declined due to increased competition and resulting pricing pressures. On the other hand, revenues from roamers have consistently grown in the same period due to increased mobile penetration in local markets and an increase in travel. Various network operators have preferred bilateral roaming agreements (“partnerships”) with each other that include more favorable roaming charges than non-partnership operators. Therefore, “preferred” visited networks are those that the home network prefers its outbound roamers to register with when traveling outside their home coverage area. Non-partner networks are “non-preferred”.
Network operators can maximize their margins and the roamers can get more attractive roaming rates and services if roamers roam on their home mobile operator's preferred (or partner) networks. When the subscribers roam into visited networks from a HPMN, they may roam onto one, two or more VPMNs, one at a time, based on various criteria. These VPMNs may also include the “non-preferred” VPMN networks. Hence, protecting the existing roaming revenues and growing them further has become an important priority for the network operators worldwide. However, current methods of controlling which network a subscriber registers to when he/she is roaming have certain disadvantages.
The HPMN operators use traffic redirections techniques in their networks in order to discourage their subscribers' handsets to roam with the “non-preferred” VPMN networks. Sometimes, the HPMN operator can use traffic redirection techniques to control the distribution of outbound roamers among VPMN networks in a country so that the “preferred” VPMN network will get a very high percentage of the HPMN's roaming traffic and the “non-preferred” VPMN networks will get a low percentage of that roaming traffic. Those traffic redirections techniques used by an HPMN operator can deprive the non-preferred VPMN operators of inbound roaming revenues. Sometimes these VPMN operators may have a partnership with the HPMN and may even be the “preferred” networks. Furthermore, the traffic redirection that is based on rejection error, timeout or abort techniques generates network errors to the mobile handset's radio interface. The generation of these errors compels the mobile handset to initiate again a number of registration attempts. This can overload the network interface between the HPMN and the VPMN.
In cases when there are more than two VPMN operators in a country, some competing and “non-preferred” VPMN networks also deploy a form of traffic redirection at their end to retain the inbound roamers by stopping them leaking out of their network. This leads to decrease in revenues for the other VPMN operators. It would be disadvantageous for these VPMN network operators to relinquish the control of the subscriber even when a handset has initiated a registration attempt with a non-preferred network for any reason, such as failure of the SIM network list to produce registration on a preferred network.
Due to one or more of the above issues, there is a need in the art to counter outbound traffic redirection by the HPMN operator and also to counter inbound traffic redirection by competing VPMN operators.